Anti-Racism at UM
UM is committed to taking active and conscious efforts toward understanding and eliminating all aspects of systemic racism. We strive to be a community where anti-racism is embraced. Learn about the steps we are taking to make UM a community where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
UM Anti-Racism Strategy
The UM Anti-Racism Strategy sets an ambitious goal of combatting institutional racism and moving towards racial justice. The strategy amplifies the significance of racial justice for the UM community, enhances visibility of ongoing anti-racism efforts and provides a framework to continue this collective work. It highlights the need for intentional anti-racist actions to dismantle systemic racism and to mitigate the harms caused by all forms of racism.
Aligned with MOMENTUM: Leading Change Together (UM Strategic Plan 2024 – 2029) and the Truth and Reconciliation Framework: Time for Action, the UM Anti-Racism Strategy provides a foundation to meet our collective commitments to advance anti-racism and Reconciliation for transformative change and to foster a vibrant community.
UM's commitment
Our commitment to anti-racism is a collective responsibility. Based in the enduring principles of human rights, we engage as a community in learning, dialogue and actions necessary to transform UM.
We commit to:
- remaining attentive, responsive and adaptive to the evolving challenges and impacts of racism.
- recognizing different forms of racism have their own specific histories, and impact racially marginalized communities in unique ways.
- working together in ways that mitigate lateral violence and that foreground shared humanity, equity, care and respect, while taking action to counter all forms of racism.
- applying an intersectional lens to racialization and its impacts on individuals and communities.
Based on these commitments, together we confront anti-Indigenous racism; anti-Black racism; anti-Asian racism; and religious based-racisms, including antisemitism and Islamophobia, that target Jewish, Muslim and other marginalized religions.
Anti-Racist Action
In taking action, we recognize:
- Racial diversity, including diversity within racially marginalized communities, is a reality and this diversity enriches the intellectual, social and cultural fabric of UM.
- Dismantling systemic racism across all university systems demands a comprehensive approach that goes beyond any one faculty, office or policy.
- The path to dismantling all forms of racism is intergenerational and must honour the work of Elders and knowledge keepers, community leaders and anti-racist activists, researchers and teachers who have long been doing anti-racism work across UM campuses.
- Anti-Racism work must include and acknowledge those community members subject to systemic racisms, who have shared the negative impacts of racism, and for whom racial justice is essential to make UM a vibrant community.
Background and informing frameworks
The UM Anti-Racism Strategy reflects the collective work and voices of the members of the Anti-Racism Task Force, as well as the many members of the UM community who have shared their experiences, knowledge and expertise on various forms of racism, including religious-based racisms. This input has been formal and informal. It includes feedback heard in consultations and web-based feedback through the Anti-Racism Forum, development of the Truth and Reconciliation Framework: Time for Action and MomentUM: Leading Change Together.
The UM Anti-Racism Strategy is informed by past and ongoing work with the Office of Equity Transformation, UM Anti-Racism Policy Committee, Office of Human Rights and Conflict Management, and Rady Faculty of Health Sciences' Dismantling All Forms of Racism Policy.
UM also has a stated commitment to advance Reconciliation. This obligation requires taking action to combat anti-Indigenous racism, acknowledging the unique experiences and realities of Indigenous Peoples which are distinct from those of other systemically disadvantaged and marginalized groups. As such, the Anti-Racism Strategy walks alongside, complements and supports the Truth and Reconciliation Framework: Time for Action.
Anti-Racism strategy objectives
The UM Anti-Racism Strategy is a living document that acknowledges the University’s history of perpetuating racisms; and the current reality of students, staff and faculty who experience racism targeted at Indigenous, Black, Asian, racially marginalized groups, as well racism directed at Jewish, Muslim and other marginalized and racialized religions.
The strategy is grounded in an understanding of the need for urgent transformative institutional action. We are seeking to lay the foundation for something new and sustainable – an approach rooted in racial justice that moves beyond small adjustments and surface-level fixes.
Key objectives:
- Provide a framework for action and accountability on anti-racism with the goal of dismantling all forms of racism.
- Amplify and support anti-racist work by units across UM campuses leading in this space.
- Facilitate coordination of diverse anti-racism initiatives.
- Advance communication about and collaboration between anti-racism initiatives to realize university-wide impacts.
- Adopt an intersectional approach that recognizes the interconnectedness between anti-racism work and work to address other entrenched systemic institutional inequities.
- Promote understanding of the ways different forms of racism are intertwined.
- Build actions and strategies rooted in mutual understanding and meaningful solidarities.
- Inform broader UM equity and anti-oppression work so that racial justice is embedded in university-wide initiatives.
- Recognize and appreciate the diversity and complexity of different racisms and forms of racial marginalization, including religious-based racisms, and resist conflation of the diversity and complexity of the histories, communities and peoples of those who are racially marginalized.
Themes Anti-Racism transformation
Five interconnected themes organize our work toward the goal of overcoming institutional racism and moving toward racial justice. Each theme is critically important to dismantling systemic racism at UM. They are bound together by numerous overlapping elements and must be addressed collectively as five interdependent parts of a whole.
These themes are also reflected in UM’s fundamental commitment to fostering a vibrant community, as outlined in MOMENTUM: Leading Change Together and corresponding Implementation Plan.
Each theme has a guiding vision that empowers UM offices, academic and non-academic units, and community members to develop plans and actions that advance anti-racism within and across the thematic areas in ongoing ways.
Representation and equity
Guiding vision:
- The presence of a diversity of peoples and perspectives, when meaningfully engaged, benefits academic, educational and organizational excellence.
- Diversity is a fact in our current world.
- Representation and equity are essential for academic excellence and innovation, and for diverse people to thrive and flourish.
Diversity is proactively prioritized through addressing systemic inequities in recruitment and retention practices in ways that support and value excellence for all employees, both staff and faculty. Racially marginalized staff and faculty are seen as potential leaders, and they are provided opportunities for skill development for leadership roles. All UM community members are empowered to envision and realize an anti-racist future.
Mobilizing a full spectrum of ideas, talent and experiences is essential to creating post-secondary educational institutions and research ecosystems that respond to changing Canadian demographics and global challenges. A fundamental respect for human rights and shared humanity ensures that UM contributes to: building an innovative, prosperous and inclusive society; creating institutions that are responsive; and empowering the next generation to navigate a fast-paced changing world.
Research and academic programs
Guiding vision:
- Multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary teaching and collaboration on racism and anti-racism is valued and supported.
- Excellence in research on racial justice is valued and supported, with UM contributing to an evidence-based research ecosystem in this field.
- Across UM, diverse experiences are reflected in research methodologies, training, pedagogies and academic programs.
- Research policies, processes and practices strive to remove systemic inequities impacting racially marginalized researchers and communities, and to advance accessibility in research.
Research and academic learning are at the heart of the University’s purpose. Critically assessing pedagogical approaches, curriculum content and research methodologies are one step toward establishing anti-racist ways of knowing and working in academia. This process is collective, collegial and respects academic freedom, as we build understanding across UM campuses through different perspectives, and in ways that encourage us to think with and across diverse ways of knowing.
Leadership transformation
Guiding vision:
- Leaders and changemakers exist across the university community. We need to create spaces for meaningful participation in decision-making that move beyond those holding institutional positions of power.
- Responsibility and accountability for anti-racist work belongs with everyone at UM.
- Institutional leaders have unique opportunities to advance anti-racism work and systemic change.
Transforming leadership to dismantle racism means both redefining who we perceive as leaders and ensuring a commitment to anti-racism among those holding institutional positions of power.
Broadening our view of pathways to leadership allows us to look for leaders across UM. By seeing strengths and excellence of individuals who do not hold conventional positions of authority, we expand the ability of these individuals to participate, motivate, encourage and collaborate.
Anti-racism champions at all levels and from all areas at UM will collectively lead and guide the work, with the fundamental recognition that each of us has the power to create positive change.
Education and empowerment
Guiding vision:
- Every individual, regardless of their role at UM, is provided with learning opportunities to unlearn the norms of racism.
- UM views anti-racism learning as a continuous journey.
- Anti-racism education must encompass diverse perspectives to ensure that the specific histories and current manifestations of different racisms, including religion-based racisms, are understood and the impacts of different forms of racism recognized.
Education to unlearn the norms of racism is transformational; it empowers everyone in the University community to recognize and interrupt racisms, and to support anti-racist principles and actions. Anti-racism education must be integrated into the fabric of the University’s activities through ongoing anti-racism learning opportunities for students, staff and faculty. As a community, we need to support learning at various levels and ensure anti-racism education is rooted in evidence-based research that is historically accurate, as we well as addressing ongoing practices of racism.
Safety and well-being
Guiding vision:
- Wellbeing and safety must be approached through a lens of racial justice.
- Clear and consistent responses to acts of racism, coupled with culturally responsive support to those impacted by racisms, are required.
- Physical and virtual spaces where every individual can flourish need to be intentionally created.
- A community that values diverse cultural traditions and respects the histories and lived experiences of racially marginalized communities is nurtured.
The wellbeing and safety of racially marginalized community members should be understood holistically, with attention to the physical, cultural and mental wellbeing of individuals and communities.
Building anti-racism through education
Anti-racist transformation requires lifelong individual and institutional commitments rooted in consistent effort, resilience and a commitment to learning and growth. To this end, UM has also set out shared pathways to guide progress and accountability for our institution and collective community through UM’s Anti-Racism Learning Framework.